Why Are Glenn Beck and His Media Colleagues Walking Free While Minnesota’s ‘RNC 8′ Are Prosecuted for Terrorism?

Real Texans, natives from those parts of the state not dominated by the alligator-cowboy-boot luxury of the oil-pump Petrograds of Dallas or Houston, claim that, even in its death throes, a poisonous snake is still dangerous. Poke it with a stick and, with it’s a final ounce of waning spite, it will snap and try to kill as it writhes its last.

Such is the case with the fading right-wing media and their cohort in the Republican Party, their only hope for continued relevance encapsulated by the fervent wish that the increasingly popular President Obama fail miserably, and take the country down with him. These neocon elite know, even from their musings of history by the dim firelight in Plato’s cave, that a successful Obama spells the end, at least in their lifetimes, of the modern ‘free market’ corporatist-conservative movement blueprinted by Milton Freidman and his acolytes, and set into motion by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidencies, culminating in the Dubya-initiated disaster of our current economic crisis, the inevitable historically-repeated result of stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

But the Limbaughs and Becks, Hannitys and O’Reillys are also battling with each other for ratings from a dwindling, aging audience, causing them to engage in a war of words wherein they must out-do one another in issuing paranoia-laden proclamations in a voice of sullen outrage, bray archaic Cold War bombast or, in the case of Glenn Beck, display the tearful, fearful ramblings of a man losing his mind.

Not that any of them actually believe any of the guff they spread daily – they are mental itinerant workers who are well-paid for peddling a continually shifting ideology – when Bush said we are not at war with Islam, he was statesmanlike and diplomatic; when Obama does it, he’s surrendering to our Muslim enemies. When Bush ordered Shock and Awe bombings of Baghdad that killed innocent Iraqi teenagers, that’s understandable – the unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ of war; when Obama orders the three teenage pirates threatening the life of an American citizen shot, he’s killing kids. When Clinton was in office, seemingly his every movement, even firing staff in the White House Travel Office, was worthy of a special prosecutor; when Obama talks about holding those accountable who illegally ordered torture, he’s turning the country into a banana republic. And on it goes, an endless stream of swill offered up by the millionaire shills for the entertainment division of the Fox funhouse mirror of political propaganda, toiling in the fields planted by Edward Bernays, Joseph Goebbels, H.R. Haldeman and unsung laborers in behavioral psychology and mass marketing who devoted their professional lives to convincing the public to buy products they don’t need and adopt political ideas that empty their bank accounts and lower their wages, while tempering their minds to accept ever larger loads of pernicious claptrap that serves the profitable interests of the wealthy moguls who bankroll the whole anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional neoconservative operation.

Every day, in the safe confines of the radio or cable TV studio, these media evangelists of the New World Order wrestle with indomitably evil straw men, unleash torpedos of invective at liberal ghost blips on the radar, launch fusillades of bile at comic book enemies from the Eisenhower era, crucify those they detect as suspicious of Jesus’ divinity or conservative Republican provenance, and, most hilariously, mount fearsome attacks on the mythical Left-Wing Media, the corporate conglomerate parents of which are owned by wealthy capitalists who invest on Wall Street, seek further tax cuts for their upper-income bracket, deregulation for their companies, pay good money to lobby politicians, and, in many cases, own a piece of the outlet that broadcasts the daily doses of outrage and hate to the lower caste of ignorant, addled Proles seeking an easy leftist scapegoat for what has happened to their country in the wake of the misrule of the elite Republican right.

More On Sarah Palin:Nico Pitney over to the Huff Post reports that Alaska’s Gov. Hockey Mom appeared on a shock jock’s radio show in Anchorage and laughed her head off when her opponent in the Alaska State Senate, Lyda Green, was called a “bitch” by the show’s host. The slammer was that she also cackled when the idiot-with-a-microphone referred to Green, a cancer survivor, as “a cancer” twice and joked about her weight. An op-ed in The Anchorage Daily News called Palin’s giggling, “one of the most unprofessional, childish and inexcusable performances I’ve ever seen from a politician.” Classy lady, that Sarah.

– Yet More Palin:Whatever facts shake out regarding her firing of the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner for allegedly failing to dismiss a state trooper who went through an acrimonious divorce from her sister in 2005, Palin, like most Republicans, doesn’t seem to see that there is a glacier-sized conflict of interest here: She should have encouraged an investigation into his conduct and then left it to her AG or other independent body to prosecute the case. For that matter, if the guy beat his ex-wife, was drunk on the job and abused his son, as Palin has claimed, why wasn’t he arrested? (Many of Palin’s complaints have been dismissed after further investigation.) That she didn’t recuse herself from the case entirely shows she has no respect for, or knowledge of, how the law works, and we’ve had enough of that in the Executive Branch in the past eight long years. (BTW, Palin originally recommended this guy for the trooper job when she was Mayor of Wasilla. Judgment?)

– Soon to Be Breaking News: Something nasty will rise to the top regarding Palin’s close connections to large energy corporations – she’s the only so-far unindicted major Republican in the state and, contrary to Old Man McCain’s guff, she didn’t get there by being a ‘reformer.’ (Her ‘reforms’ were mainly just dumping her political enemies.) In Alaska, if you’re a GOP politician, you make the deal with Energy Money to move into the Big Leagues. This will be enough to sink the USS Maverick once as for all, as his ‘judgment’ is revealed to stink on ice (not much of a pun intended).

– ALPO Update:The AP reports that both Bush and Cheney have now pulled out of the GOP-O-Rama in St. Paul entirely. Seems someone realized that being visually associated with the most loathed president and vice president in our history is maybe not the best thing for Republicans this year. Instead, the hapless Junior will be down in Texas ‘monitoring’ Hurricane Gustav (read ‘vacationing’); and Deadeye Dick is on a four-day jaunt to Europe, including a drop-by in Georgia (uh oh). Incidentally, McCain’s handlers have decided to curtail the Republican convention activities from four hours a day to two, purportedly due to deference for the possible victims of Gustav, but really it’s likely because they didn’t think they could dredge up much of an audience the Right’s Last Rites. This speaks volumes about what terrible shape the GOP is in; no wonder Rep. Tom Davis III (R-VA), in a rare flash of honesty, told CNN last May: “The Republican brand is in the trash can. If we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”